E. Problem Interrelationships and Determinants

We can gain some greater insight into the character of these urban problems, and also into the administrators' perceptions of the problems by examining some of their interrelationships. We begin with the most obvious questions. Are the urban problems related to size, density, or rates of urban growth?

Size and Problem Scores. City size is clearly related to the seriousness of a variety of urban problems. For countries other than Japan, the larger the city, the more serious are problems of traffic volumes, flows, and exhaust, homelessness and low cost housing, and all categories of crime. On the other hand, health and education scores are not related to city size, nor are problems of public utilities or pollution. Japan shows both similarities and differences. Like the other countries, Japanese problems of parking, low income housing, auto exhausts and industrial wastes are related to city size. Larger cities have more serious problems in these areas. Unlike the other countries, however, Japan's problems with health, primary health care are also related to city size.

Growth and Problem Scores. One of the interesting findings to emerge here concerns the impact of rates of urban growth on the perceived seriousness of urban problems. For all countries, excluding Japan, rapid growth leads to greater problems in primary education. On the other hand problems of employment, in all countries including Japan, seem to be less severe when cities are growing rapidly, especially from in-migration. It is possible, of course, that cities that are growing rapidly from in-migration are essentially more attractive precisely because they have more jobs. Thus it may well be the employment opportunities that are attracting workers, leading urban administrators to perceive both rapid in migration and less serious problems of unemployment. For Japanese cities the water quality, revenue base, tax and subsidy situation are also helped by rates of urban growth.

Problem Perception

Earlier we noted that whether or not urban administrators perceived their growth rates to be a serious problem depended in part on something other than the growth itself. The above provides some possible explanation. In effect, growth may produce both problems and opportunities. But what it is that leads administrators to consider that their growth constitutes a serious problem? For both Japan and the other countries, the most important sources seem to lie in overburdened urban infrastructure. That is, weakness in public transportation, low and middle income housing, industrial wastes and pollution seem to produce in the administrators a sense that rapid growth poses a serious problem. In addition, in Japan, problems of unemployment also lead administrators to perceive a serious problem in urban growth.

There are two interesting reversals as well. There are some conditions that mitigate the growth problem. In Japan, for example, a higher quality of urban water services makes urban growth appear not to be an important problem. In the other, poorer, countries, the higher the quality of health and family planning services, the less an administrator is likely to perceive urban growth as a serious problem.